Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The willow is too close to the house.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

You are here: Home / Climate Change / How about that weather? / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Waiting

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Waiting

by | 178 Comments

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Jackals in the area, or with family / loved ones in the area, know that the rest of us are holding you in our thoughts. Check in when and as you can!

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A little Sunday-morning inspiration:

Reader Interactions

178Comments

  1. 1.

    MattF

    Andrés is a local hero here in Bethesda. He’s got a lovely restaurant a block from where I live, and I’m happy to eat there.

    ETA: And patrons are required to prove they are vaccinated.

  2. 2.

    Falling Diphthong

    I really appreciate the series from Nick Cho.

    It reminds me of a character on the show <i>Humans</i>–about robot AI becoming sentient, and the robots were never more human than when doing something that didn’t make sense but damn it they wanted to anyhow. One of the “human” things our AIs did was to loyally follow the son of their founder, who was deeply well intentioned but would give up at a puff of wind. Great as a character, yet incredibly frustrating. Cho’s description of guilty white liberals fits the noble yet deeply useless Leo Elster.

    Like, you aren’t wrong that democracy is more fragile than we might have imagined 10 years ago. But you are wrong to throw up your hands and lie down.

  3. 3.

    oldster

    That Nick Cho thread is interesting. He’s describing a kind of hapless liberal loser version of the angry right-wing “replacement” theory. Both of them are mourning the passing of an era, both of them see a depressing future for whites in America. Rage-head rightists lash out in hatred; loser liberals cringe in guilt, saying we brought this on ourselves. (Oddly, their motto might be Jefferson’s line, that he trembled for his country when he considered that God is just. That old hypocrite.)

    But Cho’s point is that both reactions are bullshit. Our best days are ahead of us, if we’ll open our hearts to the change. Rage and guilt will not build a better, more diverse America, an America open to all races and creeds, but hope and joy will.

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MattF:

    Before I’m much older, I want to see José Andrés win the Nobel Peace Prize. Also the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Medal of Honor. What a tireless hero.

  6. 6.

    Gvg

    I don’t get the guilt thing at all. I also don’t get my ancestors did something great therefore I am special. Hogwash. I didn’t enslave anyone or do Jim Crow. I haven’t killed anyone. I have to do responsible kind things with my life to be worth anyone’s respect. Which currently means vote every time carefully and sabotage the gop all I can.
    I have always rather resented the caricature of the guilty liberal. I don’t even know any liberals that are like that. It’s a fake IMO.

  7. 7.

    evap

    I have eaten in several of Andres’s restaurants in DC and they are awesome. Cooking food and sharing it with others in one of my favorites things to do and I dream of volunteering with World Kitchen when I retire.

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Gvg:

    I have always rather resented the caricature of the guilty liberal. I don’t even know any liberals that are like that.

    Count yourself very fortunate. I’m in almost constant fighting these days with a couple of friends whose liberal credentials are (on paper, anyhow) impeccable. Their vehement criticism of the US and Democrats comes from a lefty perspective, but I’ve told them in so many words that the effect is the same as if they were regular Fox viewers. Infuriating.

  14. 14.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MattF:

    Well, one is Canadian, and the other is in process of emigrating to Portugal. Don’t worry, I’m not alienating allies. But my point to gvg was that these people do exist, even if they have none in their own spheres.

  15. 15.

    m.j.

    I am being replaced.

    Thank-you.

    I work with new people from disparate regions of the globe and I am glad for it. They are bright, inquisitive, and ready to make this place their home.

    As an aside, I’d like to say that this country desperately needs a national health service. Too many people, like me, and more to come are only linked to their jobs because they can get decent healthcare. What we have now isn’t a benefit, it’s an anchor. I feel chained to it and I shouldn’t have to be shackled.

  17. 17.

    germy

    No immigrant has taken your job. You were laid off by a capitalist who required cheap labor and took advantage of that immigrant to increase his profits, and nothing makes him happier than to hear you blame the immigrant and not him.

    — mohamad safa (@mhdksafa) August 28, 2021

  18. 18.

    germy

    What we learned in 2020? That oil is worthless in a society without consumption. That healthcare has to be public because heath is public. That 50% of jobs can be done from home while the other 50% deserve more than they’re being paid. That we live in a society, not an economy.

    — mohamad safa (@mhdksafa) August 21, 2021

  20. 20.

    gene108

    @oldster:

    That Nick Cho thread is interesting. He’s describing a kind of hapless liberal loser version of the angry right-wing “replacement” theory…. loser liberals cringe in guilt, saying we brought this on ourselves.

    What liberals opine about regarding how much “America sucks” and “we deserve bad thing” are not a different side of the same coin as the right-wing replacement theory set. Some liberals are just hardwired to see the negatives, like some sort of reflex built in response to all the “America’s the greatest nation” rhetoric that’s been around for decades.

    They just hyper focus on all the bad things, and refuse to acknowledge any good things about this country. But these liberals are not trying to thwart progress.

    Right-wingers are actively trying to undo changes this country has undertaken over the last 100 years. They are well funded, well organized, and have a huge media platform to get their message out.

    Another take on Nick’s point is immigrants are acutely aware of how things are done in at least one other country, and therefore have a real world frame of reference to gauge how good or bad the U.S. is regarding economic opportunity, racial equality, political corruption, environmental protection, etc.

    They aren’t just looking at news reports from Scandinavia, deciding it’s heaven on Earth, and therefore the U.S. sucks, because we aren’t Scandinavia.

  21. 21.

    Ksmiami

    I am not a guilt-ridden liberal, but we are fighting a real battle with a not insignificant number of GOP members who really want to undo modernity and turn this nation into an apartheid state. And they are well funded with a loud microphone. Yes our future has a lot of potential, but can we defeat the fascists first?

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Unconfirmed reports of an explosion in Kabul. I can’t imagine being POTUS Biden right now. What a grim, worrying, and sad weekend.

  24. 24.

    MomSense

    Worlds collide.  So nice to see Your Korean Dad (Nick Cho) here.  I’m a big fan of his videos.

  25. 25.

    gene108

    @Gvg:

    I have always rather resented the caricature of the guilty liberal. I don’t even know any liberals that are like that. It’s a fake IMO.

    I’ve run across many online, and some in real life.

    It’s part of what keeps liberals from claiming we are the “real” Americans, and the patriots who bring out the best in America. Some politicians, like President Obama and President Biden, are able to both acknowledge short comings and talk about how improving women’s rights, civil rights, etc. are what make us great, but not many people can walk that line successfully.

  27. 27.

    Salt Creek

    When it comes to white guilt, I disagree. Power is rarely transferred peacefully if at all, the Dutch handing over New Amsterdam to the British is a rare exception. Like it or not power transfers are mostly accompanied by violence. At that point it becomes “Whose side are you on?”

    There is a power transfer taking place (as it should) and those in power will fight like hell to retain that power. It will get messy, hopefully not violent but the Second Amendment people might have something to say about that.

    This concept of white guilt is not hard to understand, it can be frustrating to some, Martin Luther King had harsh words for white liberals in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail. But these people are living in two worlds, they know what side they are truly on and they don’t like the answer.

  29. 29.

    Cermet

    First off, any jackals in the Louisiana area and especially south and west of New Orleans, hoping you get through this with a minimum of damage and that the pumps in New Orleans can stand up to the massive rain. Certainly hope the levees hold and aren’t overtopped.

    @Gvg: Agreed; this type of nonsense only helps us lose sight of the fact that our democracy is in grave danger and that the thug party will stop at none thing short of a fascism dictatorship by the white elite.

  31. 31.

    Princess

    @Gvg: I agree. And in general I am tired of hand-waving “you guys over there in my imagination, suck” twitter threads like this one. If someone needs to be called out, go ahead, but otherwise these caricatures don’t motivate or change or activate one single thing.

  32. 32.

    Low Key Swagger

    I can’t completely dismiss the idea that many Liberals experience guilt.  I know I do.  Is it misplaced?  Probably.  But it’s real, and in some instances, useful.  I work hard here.  But I use a tractor, power tools, and I have the luxury of knowing that if I perform my work poorly I will still eat,  and sleep in a comfortable climate controlled space. The people who labored here before did not have that.  Of course, I’m also someone that finds it hard to enjoy food if anyone or anything is going hungry.  Through an accident of birth, I live better than at least 95% of this planet’s inhabitants.  I hate that I sometimes feel guilty about it.  But it doesn’t make me a bad person, or a bad Liberal.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    I do get tired of the anti-Eeyore crowd telling me/us that, because someone says/writes some version of “the RWMFs are trying to destroy democracy all over the country,” it means that person has given up.

    Cho is certainly able to string words together in pretty sentences. It would be better if he were a more subtle/nuanced thinker. As I often say to Mrs. SFAW, the world is not binary. And, rational, intelligent people can sometimes hold partly-contradictory thoughts in their head without stroking out.

  34. 34.

    Geminid

    @Gvg: I attribute some of the trashing of white people as a group on this forum as an expression of white guilt. I tend to suspect that many of the people shading whiteness are white.

  35. 35.

    debbie

    @oldster:

    I don’t feel guilt. When I see videos like that jerk in Miami International throwing a hissy fit over masking up, I feel sadness for everything this country has lost.

  36. 36.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gvg:

    I have always rather resented the caricature of the guilty liberal. I don’t even know any liberals that are like that. It’s a fake IMO.

    No, I’m one. More or less.

    The thing about me is that I’ve got an… internal hot-take generator. A kind of inner troll. And that inner troll is constantly coming up with ingenious arguments about how the net moral value of my life is negative, doom is inevitable and it’s the fault of something I did, or that the only thing that can save the world is some kind of horrific extreme measure. It also likes to seize onto tendentious online arguments to that effect. It’s hard to suppress that guy sometimes.

    I figure some people have that voice but don’t have a filter on it at all.

  37. 37.

    catclub

    @Gin & Tonic: ​
     

    Pedant says the Medal of Honor is a military award only. Otherwise I share your sentiment.

    What if you fought in the War on Christmas?

  39. 39.

    artem1s

    I get the Cho’s point of handing things over to those who don’t think things are doomed.  And I agree that the base of the Democratic Party is those who are working for change, not just those whinging about how bad everything is. Stacy Abrams for instance.

    But the doom sayers in my sphere aren’t doomsayers out of a liberal mindset. The folks I’ve been hearing spread the doom and gloom are those white working class, true patriot, real christian, gun humpers. The Paulist, glibertarian faux liberals who only cared about their exceptional white fauxgressive cult leaders are far more guilty of apocalyptic thinking than mainstream liberals.  The loudest and most annoying doom sayers aren’t white liberals but they are the worse offenders when it comes to ignoring white supremacy and the power and safety it affords them.  I’ve known east coast type liberals who insisted on handing over control of the messaging to those who were whinging the loudest because it’s impolite to talk about politics in polite company. I know lots of white progressives who are fixated on what they call neo-liberals as the being the cause of everything bad in Democratic Party (mostly they mean the Clintons and Bidens and anyone not Bernie) and country.  They sound awfully doomsdayish to me.

    My beef is with Christian Nationalist who are pushing apocalyptic thinking to make a buck – and retain control of their churches and communities. This prevalence of doomsday thinking sprang from evangelicals pushing their end times agenda into every conversation, media outlet, and political conversation. Since TFG got elected, the pandemic, and now that anti-science and doomsday thinking is invading everyone’s sphere it’s harder for Nice Polite Dems and Republicans to ignore that their ‘nice polite’ church lady friends and country club members and suburban neighbors are actually complete pieces of human garbage and always have been. If white liberals are feeling guilt it’s over having defended the wolves in sheep’s clothing in their midsts. they are realizing their immediately family members are actual Nazis and racists dirt bags and they may have to disown people close to them not just for moral reasons, but also for their own personal safety. It’s not guilt as much as it is fear and the disorientation of having to lose your family and friends or embrace their end time mentality just to get along.

    The Liberal blaming I’m hearing sounds exactly like what Karl Rove and Rush were doing when they were trying to divide and conquer. It does nothing to address the fear mongering and doomsday cultists. Gonna have to fight against and address far more powerful and pervasive institutions than small L liberal to overcome the win/lose fearmongering.

  42. 42.

    Barbara

    @gene108: Liberal guilt is also perhaps a manifestation of the kind of frustration and fear a parent feels when their child doesn’t succeed or achieve as hoped. I think many people are truly sad that what they saw as real progress has been knee capped by people from the same demographic they are part of.  Whether as parents or citizens the outcome isn’t totally up to us.  A high level of guilt suggests that lesson hasn’t been learned.

  44. 44.

    H.E.Wolf

    It seemed to me that Nick Cho’s central point was that the problem is defeatism – and the resulting inaction and/or undermining of other’s actions – and that guilt may be its cause.

    Guilt can stay, if so wished by the person experiencing it. Defeatism and its behaviors gotta go. It’s a luxury our times cannot afford. (And like many luxuries in this country, white folk often have more than their share.)

  47. 47.

    H.E.Wolf

    Oh, and if anyone is looking for one small, concrete action to take, PostcardsToVoters.org has simple, 3-sentence postcards for the No on Recall effort in CA. Writers can request as few as 4 addresses (all to CA Democrats), and send them within 3 days.
    I’m writing to central CA at the moment. As Carol Burnett said in her mini-series, “Fresno”: The power! The passion! The produce! :)​

  48. 48.

    brantl

    @debbie:  We haven’t lost Sweet-F*ck-All, the good people have always been here, aiming toward greater good, and the miserable assholes have always been here, having their little tantrums; evolution isn’t a one way street, but the  better specimens survive and thrive, and the buttwipes dwindle and die out. This is what evolution looks like, as relates to civilization/society. Our civilizations/societies are moving both ways, but the successful ones are moving toward greater empathy, compassion and tolerance, INEXORABLY.

  50. 50.

    Matt McIrvin

    @H.E.Wolf: What Cho’s thread reminded me of is climate scientist Michael Mann talking about “doomism”. Mann is convinced that, as bad as things are with regard to climate, we’ve reached a stage at which people pushing the message that it’s too late and/or impossible to do anything constructive are as dangerous as denialists. And that these people, whatever their psychological reasons, need to get out of the way.

    (Incidentally, this is a thing that increasingly bothers me about Erik Loomis on LGM: whenever he writes about climate he emphasizes right at the top that none of this matters because avoiding doom is completely impossible. So why are you even writing this, Erik? Just to put your marker down as being morally superior while the world burns?)

    Part of the problem is that a lot of the early messaging concentrated on goals that set a simple threshold, and that unintentionally carried with it the message that if we miss that goal, it’s a tipping point of doom and nothing else we do matters. But with climate, anything we do to limit emissions actually has an incremental positive effect. That is not the message you take away from a lot of popular opining on the subject.

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    @germy: Intoxicated, violent, unstable WHITE MAN who is treating people with bodily harm is picked up and sent for treatment.

    BLACK MAN riding a sitting on his porch or riding a fucking bicycle risks arrest and possible death.

    Another day ending in Y, but this has to change.  It’s hard, but we need to be the change.

  52. 52.

    MomSense

    If you don’t experience the phenomenon that Nick Cho is discussing, count yourself lucky.  Dismissing it because you don’t see it just shows that your circle may not be as wide or diverse as the one Nick is in.  He lives in San Francisco and owns a coffee roaster and shop.  He has a huge following on social media thanks to his tik tok videos which are awesome.  He has a lot of young followers.
    I’ve posted a few times here about some of what I see happening with the youngs on social media but there’s a lot of reactivity here to “doom” and not much engagement so I have stopped. Nick Cho is attuned to the pulse among progressives, especially young progressives.  He is patiently engaging with people and using his influence to hopefully defeat the recall vote in CA.

  53. 53.

    Subsole

    @Gvg: I think a lot of those guys are Greenwald/Snowden type dipshit libertarians, or the tankiest of the tankies.

    So upset at the country for whatever reason that they decide they’re gonna go shack up to every dictator on earth to get back at America. Essentially it’s headass contrarianism’s ‘logical’ conclusion. I went through a similar phase in high school. Grew out of it when I was about 20.

    As with so much of modern politics, it’s less politics and more tantrum.

    That should be what they call this era in the history books: ‘The Great Tantrum’.

  54. 54.

    AWOL

    “American Dream?” “White Guilt?”

    What is Cho? Seems like the next J.D. Vance.

    Paging Opie . . .

  56. 56.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @H.E.Wolf: ​
      I, of course, agree with you about defeatism, but that is all I will say on this point here. People here can believe as they like, and, if I find them frustrating, I will just walk away again and to stuff in the real world.

  59. 59.

    Geminid

    @debbie: The point I made is an obvious one, maybe a truism. I did not always realize it, though. I first encountered it in conversation with a friend who had done three years jail and prison time for cannabis trafficking. When discussing some problems he had dealt with, Mike observed that there are good and bad people among inmates, just as there are in every group. It was a view I had not taken before, but which I hope I have not lost since.

  61. 61.

    Subsole

     

     

    @Ksmiami: The fascists don’t have much of a track record against teams that actually show up.

    We have the tools. We just need the will. And the patience to see it through.

  62. 62.

    germy

    @WaterGirl:

    I think it’s a matter of tribalism.  The police who picked him up and put him on a stretcher saw him as One of Them.  If they were dealing with a person of color, they’d treat him as The Other.

    I hope to see a more diverse police force in the future.  Maybe that’ll happen after covid.  Who knows?

  63. 63.

    Matt McIrvin

    @artem1s: The most vocal of the “class, not race”/”down with gonadal politics” pseudo-socialists seem to have mostly been driven straight into the alt-right by now–the masks are off and they’re just doing some version of “why can’t I say the N word” crap. I’m less concerned than I used to be about liberals taking them seriously.

    Right now, since Trump is out and Biden is having some troubles that seem old and familiar, we’re seeing more of a resurgence of liberals taking neocons way too seriously (not bad guys, right? They hated Trump!) This is a sin I’ve been guilty of myself in the past so I’m monitoring my own reactions.

  64. 64.

    SFAW

    @Gin & Tonic:
    Whenever she tries some variation of if-you-don’t-love-X-then-you-must-hate-it “argument.” [Naturally, “X” encompasses a wide range of items/places/concepts.] Happens more often than I’d like

    ETA: To answer your specific question: sometimes a few times per week, sometimes a few times per month. But, considering we’ve been together for over 30 years, I had kinda hoped the frequency would, by this time, be in the low-single-digits per year.

  65. 65.

    Gin & Tonic

    Here’s why I don’t buy the doom and gloom scenarios: my grandfather was imprisoned three times due to changing political fortunes, the last time by the NKVD, who sent him to Siberia where he presumably died; his great-grandson is an elected Member of Parliament in independent Ukraine. Progress may come slowly.

  66. 66.

    MomSense

    @Subsole:

    Nick Cho is trying to deal with the reasons liberal/progressives don’t show up.  He is the opposite of doom and gloom, but the doom and gloom is spreading rapidly and we have to figure out how to counter it.

  68. 68.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MomSense: having done my morning twitter rounds, I was wondering if this isn’t a subtweet of a prominent young white (and wealthy) influencer who’s announcing that Dems are betraying their voters

  69. 69.

    oldster

    @Matt McIrvin:

    “So why are you even writing this, Erik? Just to put your marker down as being morally superior…?”

    For any topic, whether climate change or race or public schools or science, the answer to that question is, “yes”. I like a lot of Erik’s writing, but he is veering more and more into Greenwald levels of self-righteous moral certainty combined with aggressive trolling of anyone not as morally pristine as he is.

    It’s kind of a shame. When he was more aware of his own crankiness — about ketchup, say — then it was still funny. But the Trump years changed all of us, and in Erik’s case his own despair is curdling into something ugly and narcissistic.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    @catclub

    Oy, what a time that was.

    Assigned to long distance projectile control. Still suffer during inclement weather from missile toe.

    ;)

  71. 71.

    p.a.

    ‘Liberal guilt’ is in part a sneering conservaturd slander since they deny defacto racism and believe dejure is all in the past, let’s just move on shall we?  MULLIGAN!  But if we understand there is structural racism, then white people, no matter when they came here, have unduly benefitted in some manner.  This of course doesn’t mean political paralysis is acceptable.

  72. 72.

    debbie

    @Geminid:

    There are a number of veterans where I work. I’ve noticed they haven’t lost all of their training. I tend to sit up straighter when talking to them and generally have to insist they stop ma’aming me. One or two still have that clipping kind of military cadence. There’s absolutely zero of any of this in that jerk.

  73. 73.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @oldster: yup. both el jefe’s maga & bernie’s revolution are a nostalgist’s kick to return america to what it was in 1950. each in their own way, & likewise their supportive droogs, see america as failing since the beats, & if not for negro jazz, homoerotic experimental fiction & poetry, & the introduction of amphetamines to a wider audience, we could be living in the white-centered welfare state envisioned by southern segregation democrats when they acquiesced to the racially-coded update of fdr’s otherwise seemingly leninist new deal.

  76. 76.

    MomSense

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Partly that and also because Nick has a huge following of young people who found comfort watching his sweet videos during the pandemic.  He’s got a modern Mr. Rogers vibe and talks directly to the viewer in the same way.  He also wears sneakers!
    Anyway he does lots of live chats with people and is trying to keep young people from skipping out on voting because WASF and deserve to be so because we are genocide committing colonizers, racists, etc.  Yes our history is full of all the worst but that is all the more reason to do something.  And if you just don’t have it in you to do something, then support the people who are doing something or, at the very least, don’t get in the way!

  77. 77.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @SiubhanDuinne: one not a citizen, the other wealthy enough to emigrate to a place where likely a language one is not proficient in is spoken. exactly right: the champagne n’ caviar fauxgressive left don’t ultimately care if this country has lost — as they claim it has — cause like magic johnson said when asked about the lakers front office’s next steps after signing lebron, “they ain’t gonna be here…”

  78. 78.

    Soprano2

    Why José Andrés hasn’t won the Nobel Peace Prize yet is beyond me. If he doesn’t have it already, Biden should give him the Presidential Medal. That man seems to be a saint.

  84. 84.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    the events in Afghanistan have brought a lot of never-trumpers back to their old form, but Jennifer Rubin’s conversion seems to be holding.

    We need some sober reflection on the folly of overeager interventionism. We need to come to terms with the delusional feedback loop between civilian and military leaders. Instead we have a media and political culture that are not serious or attentive enough to grasp that dilemmas 20 years in the making have no good answer, just less terrible ones. Everything is reduced to a partisan question. (Is Biden in crisis? Is this a boost for Republicans?) The media, it seems, does not know how to cover a tragedy without viewing it through the lens of horse-race politics. It is so much easier to pronounce the exit a “disaster” than to consider if one’s advocacy over 20 years contributed to the groupthink that sent young men and women to die. Confronted with 13 dead Americans, the press is eager to demonstrate Biden missed the obvious, safe course. What that is, they do not explain.

    Am I wrong in remember her as one of the most persistent cheerleaders of Bush-Cheney foreign policy?

  85. 85.

    Woodrow/asim

    I reposted Cho’s thread on my Facebook because I’ve seen those doom/gloom liberal types.

    Sometimes, it’s just people who I suspect lack networks and connections to communities that have spent decades, if not centuries, getting it in the neck. It’s hard to see the current situation as anything that can be fixed, when it is a radical departure from the America you were taught was real and true. Even moreso, when we’ve been inundated, in media, by post-apocalypses until they seem the main way to talk about The Future.

    I know that, for me, having living relatives that not only lived thru, but fought to ensure I didn’t have to live thru, Jim Crow, powers me daily. Although at the moment I have to tightly manage my emotional and mental labor, I want to put together a world where no one has to fear anything like that, ever again — among many things.

    But: there are people, so-called liberals, who just are fuckin’ left-wing edgelords. Those of us who have engaged them, are exhausted — mentally and emotionally — by the people who are “with us,” yet not just uninterested in putting in the work, but are eager to tell folx how useless that work is. These people are richly a-historical, confident in their opinions that it’s all going to burn, and eager to tell everyone how right they are, so that they can, when bad crap happens, do the “I told you so!” dance on social media.

    And they are NOT just online.

    If you saw them, you’d know. If you saw them, you’d be in — or at least know of — the communities and spaces they hold sway, in.

    And you’d know it’s also exhausting to have people deny and refute People of Color’s lived experiences, such as Cho’s, simply because you’ve never seen it. This has been said a LOT, and I’m not exactly jumping for joy to read, in a space I’ve been in for over a decade, more folx doing the “well, I never saw this so it must not be true!” dance, y’all.

    Can we please think about how we address criticism, of these kinds of discussions?

  88. 88.

    Citizen_X

    Good for Cho. I know tons of people who think, “Fuck it, we’re doomed anyway; the corporate dictatorship is coming anyway; the climate is already fucked.” And much of the “liberal guilt” that people are denying here is of the “America and the whole system is going down” sort.

    I read comments along these lines here and elsewhere. The Doomer stereotype has some reality behind it. That’s what Cho’s on about.

    @Ksmiami: 

    Yes our future has a lot of potential, but can we defeat the fascists first?

    People need something to fight for. Let’s come up with that.

  89. 89.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @H.E.Wolf:  Exactly! Too many people here seem to be missing the point. As Black Twitter often notes: if it ain’t about you, it ain’t about you. If you are doing the work to fight then you are not who Cho is talking about. But there is a large swath of liberal voters who bemoan the current state of affairs but won’t lift a damn finger to do anything about and are downright making it harder for those who are. Given the amount of organizing in this space, I don’t think he’s really referring to us. But his overall point is that actions speak louder than words and to quote Biden, sometimes the best thing you can do is stop griping and get out of the way. Much as I love to complain and doom-post I think it’s very good practice to always stop and ask “are my words helping or hurting the fight?”

  90. 90.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Matt McIrvin: it was inevitable from before the jump.

    no other reason a ron paul 2008-12 dirigible pilot becomes a bernie sanders 2016-20 revolutionary.

    tulsi gabbard’s gay conversion cult antiidentarianism was the connective tissue between ronny’s nouveau paleoconservatism & bernie’s “henry wallace was the original loser of a rigged primary” paleoleftism.

    merge ron paul’s robert taft on a train energy with bernie’s eugene debs cosplay & you get — voila — a george wallace democrat.

    & that’s how an american apartheid state can be officially consecrated.

  92. 92.

    NotMax

    @Anoniminous

    I somehow cannot get worked up over this.

    It’s a Herculean enough effort to implement tested and trained for plans on the equivalent of a moment’s notice, much less devise new procedures on the fly.

    People serious about taking/maintaining COVID avoidance measures can do so (not ideally, but realistically) to the best degree possible under the circumstances.

    No different, in my view, than not trying to provide different evacuation buses for the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. The immediate point is to hie elsewhere.

  93. 93.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @germy: who needs jazz to feel sophisticated, & like they discovered something novel & reenergizing & that only be heard rightly by a trained revolitionary semiotician when there is the alan lomax audio library?

  94. 94.

    Geminid

    @MomSense: Mr. Cho has an outsider’s point of view, and I think that gives his analysis a perceptive edge. I see the same in women like Rachel Bitecofer and Sasha Beauloux.

  95. 95.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: my theory is jennifer rubin, being a woman and jewish, switched irrevocably after the events in charlottesville, aug 2017. she saw the grievous error the gqp’s establishment supplysiders & neoconservative interventionists had made in deciding that stoking (they believed) momentary social con paroxysms against abortion (2004) or gay marriage (2008) would be the path to power for the mainline right. she didn’t want to go down that path anymore, once she realized she would be the next victim.

  97. 97.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Nick Cho is inspiring.  He’s right, too…he’s loyal to the ambition of America, which has always been elusive, right from the beginning, and he’s willing to do what it takes to get closer to fulfilling that ambition.

  100. 100.

    Geminid

    @H.E.Wolf: Defeatism may also be a luxury straight men enjoy more. My impression is that while anger seems distributed equally here by gender and race, the more defeatist people tend to be white, heterosexual, and male.

    Of course, all the non-gendered nyms can make it hard to tell who is male, and race and sexuality are not neccesarily apparent either. But I tend to identify the straight white men here by the way we argue.  And argue.  And argue.

  101. 101.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MomSense: With climate, some of it is people saying things that amount to “as long as capitalism exists, climate activism is pointless” because they think this attitude will actually lead to the overthrow of capitalism instead of squelching climate activism. And I just think “…yeah, good luck with that one, kids”.

  102. 102.

    gene108

    @Barbara: 

    Guilt isn’t the word I’d use. I think it is about people who have a very binary view of something. A thing is either good or bad. A lot liberals have taken the view that because America was founded on terrible treatment of Natives and blacks, for example, and those groups are still mistreated, America is bad.

    Try to point out good things about America, like the ridiculously high number of significant inventions that have come from this country and ground breaking research, where so many Americans get Nobel prizes it is a trivial matter, and not a celebration of national pride that a countrymen won a prestigious award.

    They cannot accept things can be good and bad at the same time. There’s inequality in this country, but progress towards equality, despite fierce opposition.

  103. 103.

    Subsole

    @MontyTheClipArtMongoose: Worse. He is Gays-Only Larry Flynt. The other letters don’t mean shit to Glemwaldo and are expressly not invited.

    Also, I strongly suspect the only reason The Gays were invited is because Glenn wanted to invite himself. He’s that kind of asshole.

  107. 107.

    Just Chuck

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rubin seems to have had an honest-to-dog John Cole moment.  She isn’t going sackcloth-and-ashes over it, but I do see a genuine change of heart in her tone, one that’s become a lot more thoughtful and less snide.

  108. 108.

    NotMax

    @Geminid

    Also (generalizing mightily here) younger. More years under the more ample belt tends to build up a callus regarding defeatism.

  109. 109.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Boy, I’m thinking if they can blow up your car while you’re driving to the airport to blow yourself up, the “intelligence community” is doing one hell of a job

    ETA: Do you still get the paradise and 72 virgins thing if you blow up for a different reason?

  110. 110.

    gene108

    @MomSense:

    Anyway he does lots of live chats with people and is trying to keep young people from skipping out on voting because WASF and deserve to be so because we are genocide committing colonizers, racists, etc. Yes our history is full of all the worst but that is all the more reason to do something.

    This really eloquently summarizes the people I am thinking about

  111. 111.

    debbie

    @Woodrow/asim:

    In case I’ve offended or ticked you off, I apologize. I am not hopeless, but here in an increasingly red state with a legislature that has lost its collective mind and with a family I belatedly see has been brainwashed, I see just how very difficult it will be to get the country back to where we know it should be.

  114. 114.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @H.E.Wolf: As Carol Burnett said in her mini-series, “Fresno”

    It’s you! You’re the other person who watched it! I knew there was another one in the world somewhere!

    Despite Carol Burnett’s huge popularity, that evening-soap satire was a huge flop. I always suspected that primetime viewers didn’t know it was a satire. Κind of like the story I’ve heard about “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” They added the opening “Comedy Tonight” number because audiences were confused by the togas and thought they were watching a badly-done serious play.

    What’s the George Carlin line about average intelligence and how half the people you know are stupider than that?

    My own feelings about white guilt are complicated. I probably am one of the guilty white liberals. Though not usually in despair mode. And as I age, increasingly uncertain about whether “white” is an accurate description of myself.

    In fact I don’t have an ethnic identity. Or I have several, none of which seem to quite fit.

  115. 115.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: I do see some politically depressed seniors who like to talk about how the world will go completely to shit after they die and they’re glad they’re about to die so they won’t see it happen. Some of that is obvious projection of their own mortality onto the world.

  116. 116.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @H.E.Wolf:  @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I remember Carol and another character being told that the Rolls was in the shop and they’d have to take the other car, then a very funny– to me– bit of shtick as Carol, with great resignation and attempted aristocratic dignity, climbed into the fold-up, “way back” seat of an old station wagon, and the chauffeur handed them a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and two flutes as they tried to look elegant and rich back there. Cracked me up. I turned it off soon after.

  117. 117.

    J R in WV

    This Monty Mongoose guy hating on homoerotic fiction gives me a pain where I sit down !

    And the guy in the airport should have been taken for medical intervention AFTER he was booked for attacking a women in the women’s restroom and assaulting an airline employee. Being a vet is no excuse for that violent behavior, quite the contrary.They try to teach you self-control and that in the military, if you can’t get it, they put you back out where you can’t mess up your unit.

    I’m a vet who had some violence directed at me, and I’ve managed to avoid getting in fights all my life.

    And no point in avoidance of the fight for goodness and rights, that’s just stupid. We all need to work for freedom and justice esactly because there are people who work against freedom and justice. My dad got death threats for supporting MLK and integration back in the 1960s, as a white Rockefeller Republican social liberal, and that didn’t stop him from working for freedom and equality.

    And hoping this week’s hurricane isn’t too bad in Louisiana!

  118. 118.

    MattF

    @Just Chuck: It’s interesting that Rubin’s opinions continue to go leftward– e.g., looking at the the politics of the politicians she admires. I think she’s pretty much given up on Romney (or Bolton), Pelosi is often her political hero and she’s a fan of the new NY governor.

  120. 120.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Difference between Obama, Biden, and that guy in between their administrations.

    Obama and Biden just quietly get the job done.

    The “quiet” and the “getting the job done” were both sadly lacking 2017-2020.

  121. 121.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    ETA: Do you still get the paradise and 72 virgins thing if you blow up for a different reason?

    i thought it was 27 virgins? Or maybe 21…? I think if a USAF drone blows you up on the way to “work” you probably go to hell for incompetence, though.

  123. 123.

    geg6

    I dunno.  I have a lot of white guilt and I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all.  It’s what makes me stop and think about the things I say and do.  That’s a positive in my book.  And it doesn’t mean I think, overall, that we are doomed, though I sometimes feel despair about where we are.  I don’t buy what this guy is selling because most of the people I’m around who are white feel the same as I do.  And I’m around young people from all over the country every day who are not despairing or pissed off or feel unwilling to fight.  And I think they don’t have the same white guilt that an old like me feels because their social and educational world has been completely different than the one I grew up in.  They are, in fact, the ones who keep me hopeful.
    But the idea that white guilt is a bad thing seems ridiculous to me.  Maybe because I grew up in a Catholic family or perhaps it’s a thing that comes with being a woman of a certain age.  In fact, I sure wish a lot more white men would feel some guilt.

  125. 125.

    Matt McIrvin

    @geg6: There’s guilt and there’s responsibility. I mean, you aren’t culpable for unjust things your ancestors did. But you are responsible for working toward, or at least not impeding, some kind of restitution if you’re benefiting from those unjust actions now. One the important points that needs to be made again and again is that it isn’t just score-settling–slavery and segregation and the rest aren’t just old evils that are gone, they’re things with enduring unfair consequences today.

  126. 126.

    jnfr

    Thank you for reminding me to send another bit of money to @WCKitchen! They are always right on the spot where they’re needed.

  127. 127.

    WaterGirl

    @geg6: I think maybe it would help if we would each define what guilt means to us.  To me, a necessary part of guilt is the sense of wrong-doing on my part, which means that I most definitely do not guilty for what my ancestors did.  There are lots of words to describe what that feeling is, but for me guilt is not one of them.

    I suspect we all have our own version of what feeling guilty means.

  128. 128.

    Professor Bigfoot

    I don’t think white people in general should feel guilty, but it would be nice for them to feel at least some sense of embarassment that their ancestors did this heinous shit.

    From there comes the determination that it must be righted and it must never be repeated.

  129. 129.

    Baud

    Talking about “guilt” is a distraction.  Some people behave the way they behave not because they feel guilty but because they are assholes.

  131. 131.

    Jeffro

    @evap:Cooking food and sharing it with others in one of my favorites things to do and I dream of volunteering with World Kitchen when I retire.

    Yup – same here!

  134. 134.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @germy: old timey things from the 1930s are all one needs to feel superior in their cratedigging.

    it was the founding principle of fat possum records, & is the raison d’ etre of third man records.

  135. 135.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @J R in WV: i don’t hate homoerotic fiction, even if i really think fight club (especially the film adaptation) is overrated.

  137. 137.

    Citizen Alan

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:  I too remember Fresno fondly. Also, what percentage of radio listeners during Orson Wells war of the worlds broadcast thought we were actually being invaded by martians being invaded by Martians?

  138. 138.

    sab

    Last 6 or 7 years NE Ohio off the lake has had pretty serious droughts every summer.

    This year about three weeks ago I mentionned to spouse ” whatever happened to our midsummer thunderstorms? One or two hours of thunder, lightening and rain every day, and everything else blue skies?”

    Well, we had that this August. Mixed feelings. Minimal grilling. Plants max happy.

  141. 141.

    Jess

    If Cho’s rant resonates with you, I highly recommend Richard Rorty’s book “Achieving Our Country,” in which he argues the academic left has retreated into cynical spectatorship instead of optimistic activism. It was written at the end of the last century, and I think things have changed a lot since then. I see these changes where I teach with both my colleagues and my students, so I think Cho’s points are more applicable to the older generation.

  142. 142.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ​
     You missed the “adopted” daughter confronting a bunch of men in clown suits demanding to know “which one of you bozos is my father?” at the big costume ball in Fresno.

  144. 144.

    Another Scott

    @germy: +1

    It was a once in 100 years (if we’re lucky) natural experiment.  Keynes was right – again.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  149. 149.

    taumaturgo

    @SiubhanDuinne: Think about this. Do you have any idea of how many enemy-initiated attacks took place in Afghanistan in 2020? Like you, I didn’t know because I didn’t care; try over 40,000. The American public didn’t care, the imbeciles from the MSM didn’t care as well as politicians of all stripes. Do you know who was paying attention and did care? The war profiteers and anyone connected with them.

  150. 150.

    debbie

    @sab:

    I thought it was the humidity that aided the little buggers. This is the most humid summer we’ve had in some time.

  151. 151.

    debbie

    @germy:

    Loved him.

    And Candance Owens seems to come down with something:

    Candace Owens has fallen severely ill from a sudden “illness” & hasn’t been seen in 2 days… where is Candace?!— William LeGate (@williamlegate) August 29, 2021

    I’m filled with not caring.

  159. 159.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @oldster: Another way the sort of leftist Eeyore — be thank you if you haven’t experienced it, it’s all to prevalent in white lefty circles in the SF Bay Area — is it often comes across that they’re facing truly haaaard for the first time in the lives.

    Yeah social change is hard, and people in power are loath to share it, let alone give some of it up. Ask any minority group that’s seeking to be treated as equal citizens: trans people, LGB people, POC especially Black people. It’s hard and usually takes an all-too-long time.

  161. 161.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: There are so many awful people in the news lately that I am losing track.  I cannot recall who M. Yiannopoulos is, except that he was associated with T****, and the name Candace Owens rings a bell but I have no idea who that is.

  162. 162.

    biff murphy

    Annie Laurie,

    Thanks for reminding me to send a nice donation to Chef Andres’ World Central Kitchen. This man is an amazing humanitarian!

    best biff

  164. 164.

    germy

    @debbie:

    Milo always keeps his chin down, like he’s doing an impression of Lady Diana.

    I don’t think he has covid, and I don’t think he injected himself with anything.  He just wants needs attention.

  166. 166.

    Another Scott

    NEW: US official confirms 2 suicide bombers were in explosive laden vehicle targeted by US drone strike today. The vehicle targeted by the US drone was parked when the drone struck. Airstrike occurred about 3 km from the Kabul Airport. The drone flew out of UAE.

    — Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) August 29, 2021

    You mean POTUS Biden knew what he was talking about when he said the US had “over the horizon” capabilities to carry out attacks without having bases in-country?

    Unpossible.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  167. 167.

    leeleeFL

    I spend much of my free time, such as it is, feeling bad about the advantages my whiteness has afforded me, and celebrating the advancements and improvements that have been available to nonwhites.

    I think it’s Catholic guilt, even though I haven’t practiced that benighted faith since I was 15.

    My Family is presently going thru a legal scenario much suffered by less fortunate people regularly, and I still recognize that our whiteness may just make it easier to navigate.  That remains to be seen.  But I refuse to think I am not privileged by an accident of birth.

  168. 168.

    Another Scott

    U.S., 97 other countries announce deal with Taliban to keep evacuating allies after Aug. 31 https://t.co/QxZa3bVRqY

    — Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) August 29, 2021

    It’s almost like the US (and other NATO countries) has more choices between permanent war and doing nothing.

    Whodathunkit.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  170. 170.

    Layer8Problem

    @Villago Delenda Est: This is the only place where anyone besides myself and my partner even knows Fresno existed!!

    Two bits stick out for me:  Dabney Coleman’s bad guy (think J. R.Ewing, but in the raisin business), saying to himself “if you control the raisins you control Fresno!”; and a poor raisin picker saying to him “you are the most evil man I have ever met,” with Coleman looking away modestly with an “aw shucks, you’re embarrassing me!” smile.  And Carol Burnett’s opposing raisin empire matriarch was spot on (my partner was a Falconcrest fan).

  171. 171.

    Brachiator

    If this nation is gonna work, it’s gonna require vision, imagination, & inspiration that may be beyond your current comprehension. My point is, if you think we’re doomed, maybe it means you should step aside, cuz there are a lot of folks who aren’t ready to go down with you.

    Love this.

  172. 172.

    Kent

    I’m just logging on here after dealing with a car repair emergency all morning with my daughter.  This might be a dead thread….

    But I agree entirely with Nick Cho.  As a HS teacher I’ve concluded that the kids are mostly all right and you have to be optimistic.  Honestly they are much better than we were at that age.  I’m 57 and I recall my HS days in the late 70s and early 80s.  We were some fucked up assholes back then.  At least most of the guys I went to school with.  Working with kids these days really helps you stay optimistic for the future.

  173. 173.

    Layer8Problem

    @Layer8Problem:  Oh, and where do I go to demand that the “control the raisins, control Fresno” quote go into the rotation up top?  Assuming I got it right, of course.

  176. 176.

    Layer8Problem

    @Another Scott:  Outstanding!  I’m reminded that when the miniseries was rebroadcast some years later someone decided a laugh track was necessary, because “none of our viewers knew it was funny because Eighties.”  The original did NOT have a laugh track.

  178. 178.

    Matt

    The problem isn’t that there aren’t lots of folks who want to make things better like Nick – it’s that there’s MORE people who’d rather see the country remade into a fascist theocracy before they see a politician who vaguely identifies as “socialist” anywhere near power.

    You can see it here every time Bernie comes up.

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